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College of Engineering

UW-Madison has one of the nation’s top colleges of engineering. It hosts 44 research centers and 21 research consortia, and it educates more than 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Our talented and innovative faculty and students are engaged in groundbreaking advancement of technology, a powerful driver of social and economic progress. But we operate in a competitive environment. Other engineering colleges have aggressive fundraising and investment efforts to improve the quality of education they provide and their reputation and ranking. So, to maintain a leadership position, the college will require tremendous effort by faculty and staff, and the commitment of strong public/private partnerships.

Outside of folks looking to purchase kitchen appliances, people don’t give much thought to stainless steel. The same goes for those who work in the nuclear engineering field, even though stainless steel is an important material inside reactors.

The faculty at the University of Wisconsin’s College of Engineering are concerned with the world’s big challenges. The college treats these challenges seriously and gives its educators and researchers the time and encouragement to explore creative solutions.

As an undergraduate at UW-Madison, Edward Tashjian began working with Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professor Azadeh Davoodi, whose research group tackles an array of problems surrounding integrated circuit design and manufacture.

When UW-Madison pursues big changes in teaching methods, students have a better chance at succeeding in the real world. Where professors see flipped course models and flexible classroom spaces, employers see more undergraduates picking up communication and collaboration skills.

The College of Engineering has completed a master space plan that identifies the necessity to renovate labs and classrooms, creating new space that meets these needs and supports the modern learning experience in an environment that facilitates the team approach to learning and research.

Bold moves. That’s what the College of Engineering is known for making when it comes to the future of research and education. And our faculty, staff, and students are making extraordinary strides to ensure that the college remains a key driver of economic and social progress.

Today’s smartphones and tablets provide consumers unparalleled mobile computing capability. Yet, these and many other technologies are critically dependent on sophisticated new materials that can solve challenges in areas ranging from clean energy and national security to human health and well-being. And currently, a new material’s journey from discovery to commercial product typically takes as… Read more »

Researchers at UW-Madison are changing the way we look at bioproducts. “We’re trying to make very high-value commodity chemicals from biomass that can be used to make different kinds of plastics and plasticizers,” says George W. Huber, the Harvey D. Spangler Professor in chemical and biological engineering. “So many people have been focusing on fuels,… Read more »

The one-cylinder test engine in a UW-Madison research lab is connected to a life-support system of pipes, tubes, ducts, and cables. You might think the engine resembles a patient in intensive care, but in this case, the patient is not sick. Instead, the elaborate monitoring system shows the engine can convert 59.5 percent of the… Read more »

Thanks to a $200,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Professor Wu has been able to test and implement pilot systems in Port Washington and Milwaukee in Wisconsin, and in Duluth, Minnesota. Using the systems he has developed, the programs will be able to better protect the swimmers and economies that rely on the Great Lakes.

A team of UW-Madison engineers is creating new, more robust decision-support software that could help prevent a frequent, potentially fatal blood-clotting condition in hospitalized patients. The work is to help prevent and manage venous thromboembolism (VTE). VTE occurs when a blood clot in a vein breaks free and travels in the blood, sometimes making its… Read more »

A team of researchers from the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, UW–Madison School of Nursing, School of Human Ecology, College of Engineering, and School of Medicine and Public Health are developing a new approach that can turn homes into healthcare environments.

In the field of manufacturing, very often the brains behind creative new concepts find themselves at odds with the operators of the machines that must produce the finished object. In the 1980s, “design for manufacturability” emerged, a new paradigm in which engineers sought to educate designers about manufacturing processes. However, this new approach had the… Read more »

With support from the New Frontier Science (NFS) group of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., UW-Madison engineers are conducting innovative research that could open new avenues for treating such diseases as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and others. NFS collaborates with external researchers in an effort to advance innovative technologies and integrate them into future medicines. “There are… Read more »

In a highly successful, first-of-its-kind endeavor, a multidisciplinary team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have created a “tumor in a dish” that can accurately anticipate a multiple myeloma patient’s response to a drug. The advance could mean a giant step forward in efforts to tailor medical treatment plans to individual patients. Led by Shigeki Miyamoto,… Read more »

Developing invisible implantable medical sensor arrays, a team of UW-Madison engineers has overcome a major technological hurdle in researchers’ efforts to understand the brain. The team described its technology, which has applications in fields ranging from neuro-science to cardiac care and even contact lenses, in the journal Nature Communications. Neural researchers study, monitor, or stimulate… Read more »

Children born with single ventricle heart defects—a condition in which the heart only has one functioning pumping chamber—often need to undergo a series of surgeries in the first years of life. Using a selective laser sintering (SLS) machine the size of a compact car, the team creates intricate, highly detailed models that accurately duplicate patients’ distinct heart defects.

Getting Us from Here to There The College of Engineering drives improvements in many areas of transportation, including safety, automobile performance, and environmental impact, among many others. Here are a few recent developments. Mapping Wisconsin traffic deaths A new interactive map developed in partnership with the Madison news website Channel3000.com gives Wisconsinites a view of… Read more »

What if a smartphone could help people struggling with addiction stay sober? A team led by David Gustafson, a UW-Madison professor of industrial and systems engineering, has developed the Addiction-Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System (A-CHESS), which provides personalized support to people recovering from alcoholism.